Doug Barron won the Regions Tradition in Birmingham last weekend at Greystone Golf and Country Club in a victory that was the crowning achievement of a long and at-times difficult golf career.
Battling through injuries and the absolute grind that being a PGA Tour player is over a long professional career, Barron has found his place on the Champions Tour and relishes the opportunity to play against players that were some of the best in the world during his time on the PGA Tour.
During an appearance on 105.5 WNSP in Mobile, Barron talked about his career on both tours, his comeback to play on the Champions Tour, and what the victory meant to him.
“It was a tough life,” Barron said of the PGA Tour. “It was tough getting beat up by Tiger [Woods], Phil [Mickelson], Ernie [Els], Vijay [Singh]. You get beat up pretty bad. To go from being the big fish in the small pond to getting beat by the best players in the world, it’s just a difficult place to play.”
RELATED: Watch: Regions champ Doug Barron takes victory lap on bicycle
Barron had five different shoulder and arm surgeries by the time he was 42 and ultimately, as he said, never got his game back after that in time to make a PGA Tour return.
After his time on tour ended, he taught for seven years in his home of Memphis, but started to get his game back once he was nearing 50.
“When I was 49 I started hitting it so good, I went and played our state open and I just got the urge to play. I talked to my wife about it and we decided to give it another shot. Getting on the Champions Tour is a feat in itself and God has blessed me,” he said.
Finishing top-five in the Senior British Open in 2019, Barron would earn his first Champions Tour victory the following week in the DICK’s Sporting Goods Open.
He knows he has had a “life-changing” five years on the Champions Tour, but being on the list of winners of the Regions Tradition is at the top of his career accomplishments.
The list of winners of the storied event includes some of the best players to ever play the game including Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, and Bernhard Langer, and the significance is not lost on Doug Barron.
“It means a lot. It’s been a very emotional week,” Barron said. “I’ve just had a great outpouring of support from my peers, which means a lot. I know no one saw me winning last week. I was just trying to play the best golf Doug Barron can play and it just happened that I didn’t catch everyone on their best day and it worked out for me. So it was a great blessing, it was awesome.”
If you want to hear Barron’s interview in full, you can check it out right here:
Michael Brauner is a Senior Sports Analyst and Contributing Writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @MBraunerWNSP
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